The Monitor. [volume] (Woodstown, N.J.) 1884-1892, 1887-01-28
CITIES OF BASHAN.

! so the Lord our God delivered into our
4 hands Og also the King of Ba~han. ana all hf@
/ people, ana We sm0te him until none was LETT
/ to him remaining. And we took ali his cities
at that time, there was not city which we
1 took not from him, three-sco"e cities. all the
/ region Of Argob, the Kingdom of Og in Bashan.
All these cities We're fenced with high walls
gates, and bars: beside unwalled towns a
great many.-Deut. iii, BIB
Many people might have thought, and
| few still believe, that there was a large
amount of Eastern exaggeration in the Ian
guage of Moses when describing the con-
| quest of this country three thousand years
ago. No man who has traversed Bashan.
or who has climbed the hill of Salcab, will
ever again venture to bring such charge
against the sacred historian. The walled
cities, with their ponderous gates of stone,
are there now as they were when the
lsraelites invaded the land. The great
number of unwalled towns are there too
standing testimonies to the truth and ac-
curacy of Moses, and monumental protests
against the poetical interpretations OF mod
ern rationalists. When we find
one after another, great stone cities, walled
and unwalled, with stone gates. and so
crowded together that it becomes almost a
matter of wonder how all the people could
have lived in so small a space: when we
see houses built of such huge and massive
stones that no force which can be brought
against them in that country could ever
batter them down; when we find rooms in
these houses so large and lofty that many
of them would be considered fine rooms in
palace in Europe: and lastly, when we
find some Of these towns bearing the very
names which cities in that very country
bore, before the Israelites came out OF
Egypt, think We cannot help feeling the
strongest conviction that we have before
us the cities of the Rephaim Of which we
read in the book Of Deuteronomy
Many of the houses in IIebran are still per-
feet, and in them the modern inhabitants
find ample and comfortable accommoda-
tons In some instances the walls of these
houses are more than seven feet thick.
The houses of kerioth and other
towns of Bashan appear TO be just snch
dwellings as a race of giants would build.
The walls, the roofs but especially the
ponderous gates, doors and bars, are in
every way characteristic of period when
architecture was in its infancy, when giants
were masons, and when strength and secur-
ity were the grand requisites. | measured
door in kerioth, it was nine feet high, and
four and half feet wide, and ten inches
thick, one solid slab of stone | saw the
folding gates of another town in the noun
tains still larger and heavier. Time pro-
duees but little effect on such buildings as
these. The heavy stone slabs of the roofs
resting on the massive walls make the
structure as firm as if built of solid masonry:
and the black basalt used is almost hard
as iron. There can scarcely be doubt,
therefore, that these are the very cities
erected and inhabited by the Rephaim, the
aboriginal occupants of Bashan; and the
language of Ritter appears to be true:
These buildings remain as eternal wit
nesses of the conquest of Bashan by Jeho-
yah. = Giant Cities Of Bdshau.